As I work at my computer in the dead of night, I reach back and
tune my TV to one of the many anthropomorphic "learning"
channels--full of "Earth's Rage" and "Volcano's Fury" and the
"cruelty" of weather patterns (replete with
mood-music-per-cloud-formation); and there I find one more in a
procession of popular "scientists" declaring for the umpteenth time
that "We could not duplicate the Egyptian pyramids today." Hoo-boy.

Are they suggesting that our technology is somehow inferior to
that of ancient Egypt? Don't you think the pyramid-builders would
have bowed in awe to a high-rise construction crane? "I gotta get
one of those things!"

We've seen and heard these ridiculous comparisons for
years--particularly on the so-called "learning" channels of cable
TV. Some bored anthropologists organize an effort to reconstruct
a miniature pyramid, or attempt to replicate the Easter Island
monuments (albeit on a vastly miniaturized scale), and they always fail
miserably. Oh, they lament, if we only had a grasp of the ancient
secrets...

Why can't modern science come out of the closet and say: "We're
not interested in the facts so much as we are in making
politically correct observations"... It seems the
politically-correct thing to observe, relative to ancient
megalithic cultures, is that they were possessed of "engineering
knowledge we still don't fully understand."

But political-correctness aside, and truth be told, we in the
modern world have technology beyond the Egyptians' wildest
dreams--we just aren't motivated to accomplish anything on the
scale of their pyramids. No big secret.

Certainly, the pyramid-builders were working only with flesh and
mineral and gravity and motivation--No hydroelectric power
sources, no internal combustion engines, no industrial-grade
lubricants. Yet "we today" cannot replicate their
accomplishments. Plainly, this is a devolution in cultural motivation.

The statements "We cannot replicate the technology" and "Their
knowledge is lost to us today" are pure bullshit. The manpower
contained within a single American apartment complex could build
a formidable pyramid over the course of a decade or so: You get
up in the morning, you quarry granite, you haul granite, you
place granite, you do it non-stop for years. Simple.

But it's not a matter of manpower or technology--it's a matter of
motivation. The public perception is that, in the Egyptian days,
there were "Gods on Earth" in the guise of the Pharaohs. "Hey,
get a move-on! The Godhead is going to be pissed!" Sufficient
motivation, I can imagine, to throw together a pile a rocks.

Today, there is no God on Earth (if you accept Ted Turner's
estimation). In the West, there is an oppressive central
government, a decadent entertainment media, and a shallow
educational establishment that provides no motivation to cultural
greatness. Western culture today is based on division of
population and importance of the individual, rather than cultural
unity toward a common cause. If we cannot aspire to the greatness
of building pyramids, it's not for a lack of technology.

So, where do our supposedly "objective" researchers get off
making these politically correct statements about "lost"
technology, when the technology and resources--flesh, mineral,
gravity and motivation--are readily available?

It sounds like a cop-out on the part of "modern
scientists-"-mystifying Egyptian technology--rather than
admitting that we have a weaker culture today, incapable of
mustering the unity to accomplish great things.